So I was trolling around through RedState.com and came across a fascinating diar about Hugo Chavez titled "The Hugo Chavez Slow-Motion Communist Revolution". What really struck me the entire time I was reading the article is just how arrogant and blind the writers over there have become.
First, the story focuses on the recent back and forth the U.S. has been having with Chavez
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://news.yahoo.com/...
Follow me below if you dare ...
Now most recently in this ongoing posturing, Chavez essentially threatened to shut down his oil refineries in the U.S. That would be a scary scary thing for the U.S. With Venezuela accounting for over 10% of our oil imports, they are quite a large supplier. Anyway, this diary over at Redstate goes on to explain how Venezuela should be thanking us for buying that oil and basically funding their government.
Can you imagine the audacity? We are the ones who are dependent on them, not the other way around. If Venezuela wants to sell their oil elsewhere, it will be easy for them to do so. They don't need American money. But, apparently paying such high prices for gas have left some Americans feeling overly gracious and deserving of praise. Whatever.
As the diary continues, they link and quote this article
http://www.noticierodigital.com/...
Now the parts that they quote are just stunning. They are using this article to essentially show just how bad a man Hugo Chavez is. Now while I may agree that Hugo isn't a great guy, the way they describe him, and the horrible things he is doing, mirror, eerily, President Bush and the Republican party. Here's the chunk of story they put into their diary:
"Chavez has achieved absolute control of all state institutions that might check his power. In 1999, he engineered a new constitution that did away with the Senate, thereby reducing from two to one the number of chambers with which he must negotiate. Because Chavez only has a limited majority in this unicameral legislature, he revised the rules of congress so that major legislation can pass with only a simple, rather than a two-thirds, majority.
Chavez has also become commander in chief twice over. With the traditional army, he has achieved unrivaled political control. His 1999 constitution did away with congressional oversight of military affairs, a change that allowed him to purge disloyal generals and promote friendly ones. But commanding one armed force was not enough for Chavez. So in 2004, he began assembling a parallel army of urban reservists, whose membership he hopes to expand from 100,000 members to 2 million. In Columbia, 10,000 right-wing paramilitary forces significantly influence the course of the domestic war against guerillas. Two million reservists may mean never having to be in the opposition.
As important, Chavez controls the institute that supervises elections, the National Electoral Council, and the gigantic state-owed oil company, PDVSA, which provides most of the government's revenues. A Chavez-controlled election body ensures that voting irregularities committed by the state are overlooked. A Chavez-controlled oil industry allows the state to spend at will, which comes in handy during election season.
Chavez thus controls the legislature, the Supreme Court, two armed forces, the only important source of state revenue, and the institution that monitors electoral rules. As if that weren't enough, a new media law allows the state to supervise media content, and a revised criminal code permits the state to imprison any citizen for showing "disrespect" toward government officials. By compiling and posting on the Internet lists of voters and their political tendencies--including whether they signed a petition for a recall referendum in 2004--Venezuela has achieved reverse accountability. The state is watching and punishing citizens for political actions it disapproves of rather than the other way around. If democracy requires checks on the power of incumbents, Venezuela doesn't come close."
Unreal. Just change the name and country to match that of our leader, and the story doesn't need to really change otherwise. Yet over at RedState they fail to see that they are calling the Kettle black.
They then go on to cite a Human Rights Watch background file:
http://hrw.org/...
This one discusses the fact that Chavez has stacked the judiciary in his favor. It's the snowball effect essentially. The more they write and complain about Chavez, the more I shake my head wondering who on earth can't see the similarities.
I just keep laughing and laughing the further down that diary I get. They even complain about a bridge to nowhere too! http://blogs.salon.com/...
Essentially, I laugh at their sad state of blindness. And it isn't like I could even explain to them their strange position, everytime you try to do so over there, any meaningful comment you try and put forward, no matter how diplomatic, is rebutted with anger and charges of terrorist sympathizing.
I hope you all could laugh at the sadness.
